86 



POST-TERTIARY ENTOMOSTRACA. 



Through the Carse of Forth these beds extend to a great depth. Near Falkirk the 

 bores show the centre of the trough to be 300 feet deep, the deposits decreasing rapidly on 

 either side. The thickness of the different beds of the series naturally varies at different 

 points all over the area covered by them. 



Entire skeletons of the Whale (about seventy feet long) were found at Airthrey and 

 Dunmore, twenty feet above tide-mark, imbedded in the clay,^ and portions of Cetacean 

 remains near Stirling, Micklewood, and Blair Drummond. The fauna is entirely modern^ 

 and many species occur in extraordinary quantities in large and well-developed beds 

 which are scattered through the whole of the districts covered by the carse clay precisely as at 

 the sea-bottom of the present day. Near Micklewood, five miles west of Stirling, 

 Cardium edule is abundant, Mytilus edulis and Ostrea edidis common. 



In a section exposed on the banks of the Allan, Ostrea edulis is seen in layers. 



In the Montrose estuarine basin, Scrobicularia piper ata is the most characteristic 

 shell. 



Some shells of an Arctic character, such as Tellina calcarea and Trophon scalariforme, 

 have been reported from the Carse of Falkirk but these evidently belong to a bed of 

 the older clay which has survived the denudation, and occupies a position beneath the 

 estuarine mud, probably indicated by No. 5 of the Grangemouth section quoted. During 

 the sinking of one of the Grangemouth pits at a depth of eighty feet (sixty or seventy 

 feet below sea-level) some bones of a Seal were found.^ From mud adhering to these 

 bones, we obtained Tolymorpliina compressa and Nonionina asterizans, with one species of 

 Ostracoda, viz. CyilLeropteron Montrosiense, a species associated with Arctic Mollusca in 

 the old Arctic clays Some clay from the same pit at a depth of forty feet yielded frag- 

 ments of Tellina balthica, a species more frequent in estuarine than in glacial beds. 



1. Drip Bridge, Stirling. 



A few yards above Stirling Bridge, the river exposes a fossiliferous bed of marine 

 clay covered by later estuarine mud. By comparing one or two similar and neigh- 

 bouring exposures, the following series was obtained -. 



1. Peat . . . . . 7 ft. to 8 ft. 



{a) Upper part black, useable for fuel. 

 ((5) Lower part soft and spongy not so useable. 



' ' Edin. Phil. Journ.,' vol. i, p. 393 ; vol, xi, p. 220. 

 3 'Trans. Geol. Soc. of Glasgow,' vol. 3, p. 367. 



3 See a paper by Prof, Turner, "On the Bones of a Seal in the Red Clay at Grangemouth,"' 

 in the 'Proceedings Roy. Soc. Edinb.,' 1869-1870. 



